BCC's new eco-friendly health and sciences building is shaping up

FALL RIVER — The drywall is up and the laboratories are starting to take shape. Some of those labs even have furniture, tables and sinks installed.

In less than three months, Bristol Community College’s $27 million, 46,000-square-foot three-story project known as the John J. Sbrega Health and Science Building will be complete. Work had begun in May 2014.

On the first floor of the new building, located near the recently completed solar-canopy-covered parking lot, the area that will soon house BCC’s dental hygiene program was taking shape. The nursing program will soon be located directly across from it, also running along a long concourse. The walls had just gone up in rooms where clinics and debriefings will soon take place. Other rooms will become faculty offices.

On the second floor, areas that will become chemistry and biology laboratories were also becoming recognizable.

Each laboratory and clinic will have windows along the concourse, allowing science to be “on display,” explained Steve Kenyon, BCC’s vice president for administration and finance. Kenyon led a walkthrough of the building with architects Fiske Crowell and Jim Moses, both from the firm behind the project, Sasaki Associates.

“There are 60 people here working every day,” Kenyon said, describing the work ongoing.

The building will serve a need, addressing a space deficit that had developed during the more than a decade of student growth experienced at BCC. Enrollment in programs like health and science programs are no different.

“We had tremendous growth. It’s been 15 years since we opened the last building,” Kenyon said.

He said he expects the college’s biotechnology programs to grow.

“I know our students are taking advantage of the health care sciences,” he said.

Kenyon described the new dental area that will open as “a teaching clinic that’s open to the community.”

Students will be able to perform cleanings for free, as well as outfit the public with mouthguards, and perform radiography.

Moses and Crowell explained the energy efficiency the building will boast. A system of geothermal wells has been installed 500 feet below in the grounds around the building.

Those wells will provide heat during cold months, while serving as a site to shunt and store heat during the summer, Moses said.

"Not only do we have geothermal, we have air-sourced heat. Those two need to work together,” he said. High windows, which will be automated, will provide “natural ventilation when weather conditions are just right,” he said.

“We’re not using fossil fuels," he said. "We use natural daylight to reduce lighting.”

Solar panels also line the roof of the new building.

The men said the project is not just the first of its kind in Fall River and Massachusetts, but the Northeast — an entirely carbon-neutral building that houses laboratory and health science classrooms.

“It’s a very intense building, in terms of laboratories,” Kenyon said, meaning the building had to be designed to enable “a lot of air exchanges.”

In addition to the laboratory and clinical spaces, the building also boasts gathering spaces and study areas.

On the second floor, there’s a long counter top, similar to those seen at airports, where students will be able to plug in their portable devices.

BCC officials hope the building will serve as a model for other laboratory buildings in the Northeast, and they have embarked on a plan to achieve a campus that would be completely carbon neutral by 2050.